Georgetown’s commitment to help meet the world’s most profound needs has shaped centuries of growth and progress.
Today, it animates the university’s $3 billion campaign ambition, calling us to invest in areas of great strength for Georgetown— and even greater opportunity.
Through Called to Be: The Campaign for Georgetown , we are answering with energy and resources, empowering future leaders and working in concert to advance the common good.
Who are we called to be—as Hoyas? As global citizens? As optimists who see the potential for a better future?
At the McCourt School of Public Policy, we are called to be a community of rigorously trained, ethically grounded future leaders. We are called to become the most inclusive public policy school, because policies are more effective when our decision makers reflect the perspectives and lived experience of the communities they serve. We are called to provide bold and evidence-based solutions that drive impact for the common good.
As we continue to address pressing global challenges, made more difficult by entrenched partisanship and weakened institutions, the McCourt School is rising to meet the moment with a sense of energy and optimism.
In 2024, we move to our new state-of-the-art building on the Capitol Campus, uniting our academic and research enterprises for the first time, accelerating collaboration and spurring new partnerships, and providing a wide-open front door to Georgetown for policymakers and changemakers from all sectors.
All the while, we continue to develop the resources necessary to diversify the pipeline of skilled public servants poised to strengthen our civic architecture— engaging people from different political perspectives, communities, and lived experiences to work together to develop and implement the solutions we need.
I call upon you to join us as we advance our mission to educate and inspire the next generation of leaders to be people for others.
—Maria Cancian, Dean, McCourt School of Public Policy
“The McCourt School is defining how to address the most difficult and complex public policy challenges in our world—bringing to bear all of the resources we have to contribute, as a university, to the common good. We are able to transform how we respond to the most urgent needs of our society because of the work that our faculty and students at the McCourt School are called to pursue.”
—JOHN J. DEGIOIA, PRESIDENT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
BUILDING A WORLDCLASS FACULTY
100+ full-time teaching and research faculty
100+ affiliated faculty 1 Nobel Laureate
Laying the foundation
DRIVING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
2,601 graduates* (and counting) *2013-2023
100+ events hosted annually
90+% of MPP students employed within 6 months of graduation
In 2013, Georgetown established the McCourt School of Public Policy to advance a vision that the world needs a new kind of public policy school to address the most pressing global challenges of today and empower the changemakers of tomorrow. This aspiration was made possible by a transformational gift of $100 million from alumnus Frank H. McCourt Jr. (C’75). In 2021, a second $100 million investment from McCourt further accelerated the school’s efforts to build a diverse pipeline of leaders and strengthen our civic architecture.
Today, the McCourt School is building an inclusive community of problem-solvers. We are educating global citizens, conducting policy-relevant research, and developing solutions with the communities we serve. We are inspiring and empowering the next generation to embrace public service and civic engagement.
And we are doing all of it within a university that’s committed to the common good, located at the center of the policy world, and driven by dynamic collaboration.
TRAINING CHANGEMAKERS
600+ enrolled students
50+ countries represented
18 student-led policy groups
9 dual-degree programs
4 certificate programs
Five master’s degree programs
Master of Public Policy
Master of Science in Data
Science for Public Policy
Master of International Development Policy
Master of Policy Management
Executive Master in Policy
Leadership
CONDUCTING CUTTINGEDGE RESEARCH
18 affiliated research centers and institutes, including: Massive Data Institute
Institute of Politics and Public Service
Specialized centers addressing education, health care, juvenile justice, international poverty, retirement security, and other critical issues
(learn more on page 30)
Meeting extraordinary challenges with extraordinary commitment
Today, we have reached a turning point. The world’s complex challenges call for coordinated action—toward shared prosperity and economic growth, civil dialogue, a stronger environmental outlook, and more equitable opportunities. The McCourt School is uniquely positioned to respond, fortified by our ethical grounding and Jesuit commitment to the common good; the strength of our faculty and students; and our Washington, DC, location.
Our community of faculty, researchers, practitioners, and students faces an urgent mandate: to realize our shared potential to create social, economic, and policy impact, and open our doors to train the next generation of problem solvers.
We will answer this call with energy and resources—investments in student access and excellence, faculty expertise, innovative centers and institutes that maximize collaboration and impact, and a new home for our school.
Student
Access and Excellence
We will give the world rigorously trained, ethically grounded leaders.
The world urgently needs skilled civil servants—leaders with diverse perspectives who recognize our interdependence and can work across differences to solve intractable problems. But to empower the best and brightest changemakers, we must enroll students without regard for their ability to pay and eliminate the overwhelming student loan debt that too often precludes public service.
Investments in scholarships, graduate fellowships, experiential learning, and curricular innovation will enable us to build the nation’s most inclusive top school of public policy and deliver highly trained graduates ready to lead by their service.
Home to the National Urban Fellows Program
In 2019, the McCourt School became the sole academic home of the National Urban Fellows, a 50-yearold program that shares Georgetown’s commitment to public service, social justice, equity, and inclusion.
National Urban Fellows are primarily first-generation college graduates with a demonstrated interest in public service. Every year, Georgetown welcomes a new cohort of fellows, who earn a Master of Policy Management degree while working onsite with a mentor organization.
ELIMINATING FINANCIAL BARRIERS TO PUBLIC SERVICE CAREERS
Students graduate from the McCourt School with great capacity to work for the common good. But, too often, they face tension between the demands of repaying student loans and their desire to work in less lucrative but highimpact careers that can directly address urgent public needs.
It’s time to change that dynamic. We have expanded scholarships for military-connected students and seek to dramatically increase the number of donor-funded scholarships and fellowships available at the McCourt School— enabling us to compete for the best talent and empowering our graduates to immediately pursue their calling as civil servants and public service leaders.
Gifts to scholarships and fellowships do not just increase students’ access to a McCourt School education. They unleash a whole new generation of highly trained leaders with an abiding commitment to the common good.
CREATING A WELCOMING COMMUNITY THAT CAN WORK ACROSS DIFFERENCES
Given how thoroughly institutional structures and culture shape our understanding of issues, the questions we ask, and even our answers, it is crucial to have leaders who know how to seek evidence from many sources and bridge differences.
Tomorrow’s policy leaders must hail from diverse communities, backgrounds, and ideologies. We will achieve that ambition by building the most inclusive and welcoming top public policy school in the nation.
ACTIVATING TOMORROW’S ‘IMPATIENT CHANGEMAKERS’
Many McCourt School students are unwilling to wait until they graduate to contribute to meaningful change in the world. We attract “impatient changemakers”—and we quickly give them the skills and practical experience needed to solve problems through collective action, across sectors and platforms.
We train students in real policy settings. Students use their ingenuity to benefit communities throughout our nation’s capital. Hoyas go behind the scenes at the Iowa caucuses. Classes design new algorithms to improve Washington, DC’s housing inspection process. Research teams go abroad to analyze Costa Rica’s development model.
Now we seek to expand these important elements of McCourt’s educational excellence by investing in:
Curriculum: Creating more innovative, inclusive experiential learning opportunities that build leadership skills and link our work to the communities we serve.
Networks: Connecting more students, more directly with practitioners of policy and politics so they can engage with a broad range of perspectives.
Dialogue: Deepening our commitment to advancing constructive discourse—across differences in ideology, faith, area of study, and life experience.
Partnerships: Building connections with other institutions— from Howard University to the American Enterprise Institute—to expand our universe of people, resources, and ideas.
Training: Advancing crucial competencies through programs such as implicit bias training for all McCourt faculty and staff.
BUILDING COMMUNITY AND CRITICAL SKILLS
Every student in our Master of Public Policy, Master of International Development Policy, and Master of Science in Data Science for Public Policy programs starts their graduate experience with the McCourt Foundations course.
This unique, five-day experiential orientation program facilitates the transition to graduate school and introduces students to a core set of leadership and communication skills. It also cultivates a student body that embraces the ideas and insights contributed by people from different backgrounds and perspectives.
Led by McCourt faculty, staff, and returning students, McCourt Foundations goes beyond traditional orientation activities and dives into deep discussions around equity, impact assessment, and community building—themes that will infuse students’ entire graduate experience.
“Foundations jumpstarts the McCourt experience,” says McCourt School Associate Professor Jennifer Tobin.
“In addition to building community, the program empowers students to examine and design policy solutions with an equity lens, a critical tool for success in the policy world.”
Faculty and Research
We will expand
our expertise to address urgent opportunities.
The McCourt School is home to a vibrant community of policy scholars and practitioners. These faculty experts are first-rate teachers, cutting-edge researchers, and leading voices on today’s most critical topics, including economic security, energy and the environment, education, international development, and health care.
We’re poised to engage even more deeply with complex, global public policy challenges—and we need a faculty large enough to fulfill that ambition. Endowing more faculty appointments and increasing the resources available for faculty innovation will enable us to build an even deeper bench of scholars who can educate future leaders and generate bold solutions in service to the common good.
Jishnu Das
Nora Gordon
George Akerlof
E.J. Dionne Jr.
FACULTY TO FUEL OUR GROWING IMPACT
We are committed to keeping pace with the needs of our students and their diverse interests, by growing McCourt’s core faculty with additional outstanding economists, political scientists, sociologists, computer scientists, and public servants. Deepening and broadening the McCourt School’s research and teaching expertise will allow us to shape solutions to global public policy challenges and elevate our reputation as a leading resource for policy guidance in the U.S. and around the world.
EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE ENRICHING OUR CLASSROOMS
George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences
Jishnu Das, former lead economist in World Bank Development Research Group
E.J. Dionne Jr., a leading scholar, author, and commentator on American politics and trends of public sentiment
Anthony Fauci, M.D., former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, a global health leader, and an advisor to seven U.S. presidents
Sheila R. Foster, expert in the intersection of environmental law and civil rights, chair of the Advisory Committee of the Global Parliament of Mayors, Former Vice Dean at Fordham Law School
Nora Gordon, an economist whose research focuses on the role of the federal government in elementary and secondary education and who also serves as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research
Sheila Foster
Anthony Fauci, M.D.
‘THE
SPARK THAT LEADS TO BETTER PUBLIC OUTCOMES’
McCourt professors Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan’s research on administrative burdens inspired the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office to rethink how it connects domestic violence survivors with support.
Previously, the office provided a list of contacts for legal aid, counseling, and other services but left it up to survivors to reach out, making victims repeatedly recount their stories.
Drawing on Herd and Moynihan’s research, King County revamped its approach, creating an electronic form that victim advocates fill out, with permission, to share information. Now, agencies see what support each survivor needs and proactively offer assistance. The office has gone from connecting about 50 cases to community services a year to 500.
“For scholars working in public policy, there is no better feeling than knowing that our research made a difference in people’s lives,” Moynihan said. “It is a great example of how building conversations between McCourt School scholars and those working in public service can create the spark that leads to better public outcomes.”
Professor Pamela Herd is an expert in aging, policy, health, and inequality, as well as the principal investigator of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in existence.
Professor Donald Moynihan is an inaugural McCourt Chair, a position reserved for recruiting extraordinary scholars and made possible by donor investment. Moynihan’s research focuses on the administrative burdens people encounter in their interactions with government and efforts to improve public sector outcomes through government reform.
Through the McCourt School’s Better Government Lab, Moynihan and Herd aim to help government agencies improve their effectiveness and make programs and services more accessible to people through the use of data analytics, rigorous evaluations, and insights from the social and behavioral sciences.
Pamela Herd
Donald Moynihan
Using ‘big data’ to answer urgent questions
As the director of the Massive Data Institute (learn more about MDI on p. 24), public policy and computer science professor Lisa Singh oversees cutting-edge research at the intersection of technology and public policy. These projects use new forms of data and large-scale computing infrastructure to tackle timely policy issues.
Singh’s own research focuses on gathering and analyzing public, open-source data collected from social media and local news to help address public policy concerns—for instance, predicting forced displacement from specific countries, including Ukraine, Iraq, and Venezuela. The resulting methodologies and algorithms can help surface powerful signals from data that can help us understand major events, activism, and human behavior.
“The common thread is how do we develop interpretable, reliable algorithms to gain insight into public opinion and human behavior.”
— LISA SINGH, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, COMPUTER SCIENCE, AND MDI DIRECTOR
Impact We will be a problem-solving engine, moving bold ideas to action.
With the McCourt School’s collaborative culture, commitment to the common good, and intellectual power, we have an obligation to translate these assets—and our prime location—into positive change. We do it now. But, with the right infrastructure, we can go further. Faster. At bigger scale and with greater results.
We are committed to building the McCourt School into a dynamic engine of impact to unravel complex problems and rapidly identify, test, refine, and implement solutions. Investments to expand and permanently endow key sources of bold ideas and action—like GU Politics, the Massive Data Institute (MDI), and the McCourt School’s 16 other affiliated research centers and institutes—will accelerate our progress.
Students and experts learning together
Through GU Politics’ Fellows Program, the McCourt School connects students with some of the biggest names in politics, government, and political journalism to learn from one another and tackle some of the biggest political challenges of the day.
During their time at Georgetown, Fellows lead lively discussion groups on hot topics, sessions open to the entire university community. They also hold office hours for oneon-one conversations and meet with student strategy teams charged with advising Fellows on ways to better connect with their generation around politics, government, and media.
GU Politics Fellows represent viewpoints from across the political spectrum and come to the McCourt School ready and eager to share their expertise and engage with a variety of perspectives.
BOLD IDEAS TO MAKE POLITICS WORK BETTER
Politics can be a powerful way to effect positive change. The Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (GU Politics) brings students and public servants together to figure out how. Launched in 2015, the Institute pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of Washington, challenging young people to be both teachers and learners in the quest for a more effective political system.
Endowing GU Politics and supporting signature offerings like its Fellows program, forum events, career programs, and experiential programs will ensure that more students and political leaders can connect to find the next big ideas and inspire civic engagement.
DEFINING THE FUTURE OF DATADRIVEN PUBLIC POLICY
The secure, responsible use of data has tremendous potential to improve policy making— and people’s lives. Housed at the McCourt School, MDI is leading the charge, connecting experts across computer science, data science, public health, public policy, and social science to tackle urgent, societal-scale issues.
MDI is harnessing cutting-edge technology to build critical digital infrastructure and advance our understanding of topics such as forced
migration, the spread of misinformation, gun violence, climate issues, and more.
Housing one of the nation’s 33 designated Federal Statistical Research Data Centers, MDI not only draws on Georgetown expertise but also has strategic partnerships with organizations like the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the District of Columbia government, and Sciences Po. Philanthropic support will sustain MDI, offer additional research grants and experiential learning for students, and expand its work as a leader in the innovative and ethical use of data to solve complex problems.
TRANSFORMING DATA INTO ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS
Data is essential to evidencebased policy, but serious data— often messy, incomplete, and inconsistently formatted—requires serious infrastructure before it can drive solutions. Housed at MDI, the Environmental Impact Data Collaborative (EIDC) has created a process to gather, clean, and make available hundreds of environmental justice- and climate change-related data sets—billions of rows of information.
The EIDC also has developed a cloud-based platform that enables researchers, community groups, and policymakers to analyze and visualize data in ways that help them make environmental policy more effective and just.
These stakeholders are collaborating in real-time on large datasets and complex projects across areas such as environmental justice, federal spending, energy, air, and water. Developing a broad-based, collaborative community is central to the EIDC’s vision. As part of that, the EIDC partners with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, seeking to engage and empower people from all segments of the country, particularly communities of color and economically marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental damage and climate change.
Capitol Campus
We will build our new home at the nexus of the policy world.
By unifying the McCourt School in one building just blocks from the U.S. Capitol we are creating a dynamic front door to Georgetown for the policy community. The new academic building at 125 E Street NW brings together the McCourt School’s research and teaching arms for the first time, connecting our students, faculty, centers, and institutes in one flagship center for learning and collaboration.
New spaces at the McCourt School on Georgetown’s Capitol Campus offer a major stage on which to convene our university’s many collaborators—and a whole new way to engage with the world. By investing in this home, we will pave the way for substantial growth and reinforce Georgetown’s enduring presence at the epicenter of global policy making.
1. Smithsonian Castle
2. 111 Massachusetts Avenue NW School of Continuing Studies, the Earth Commons Institute, and other interdisciplinary programs
3. 600 New Jersey Avenue NW Georgetown Law Center
4. The McCourt School’s new home at 125 E Street NW
5. 500 First Street NW Interdisciplinary faculty-led centers, and the Capitol Applied Learning Labs (CALL)
6. 55 H Street NW Apartment-style residence hall and living lab
7. Union Station
8. U.S. Capitol
9. Supreme Court
10. Library of Congress
A PERMANENT FOOTPRINT STEPS FROM THE CAPITOL
The McCourt School’s new home on the Capitol Campus isn’t just a fresh space. In 125 E, we are building a home for a large and growing community of world-class problemsolvers at the center of policy making.
With more than 130,000 square feet, this location allows us to significantly expand the McCourt School’s faculty and research centers. It creates capacity to establish executive-in-residence programs for distinguished civil servants and other visiting scholars, and to develop an undergraduate program that serves a new group of impatient changemakers.
Thoughtfully designed spaces support educational innovation, unlock partnership and convening opportunities, and enhance our visibility and reputation as the destination resource in Washington, DC, for policymakers and administrators.
With your help, the tech-enabled classrooms, accessible and flexible common spaces, and global convening center of this building will allow the McCourt School to be more effective in every aspect of its mission, and support Georgetown University’s engagement and impact.
THE MCCOURT SCHOOL’S AFFILIATED RESEARCH CENTERS AND INSTITUTES
Massive Data Institute
Institute of Politics and Public Service
Tech & Public Policy Program
Government Affairs Institute
The Health Policy Institute
Health Care Financing Initiative
Health Information Group
Center for Children and Families
Center on Health Insurance Reforms
National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center
Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation (gui2de)
The Center on Education and the Workforce
The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform
The Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership
The Center for Research on Children in the United States
The Center for Retirement Initiatives
Edunomics Lab
FutureEd
McCourt School on the Capitol Campus: 125 E Street Rendering
PENTHOUSE
SOCIAL NODE
CONVENING SPACE
QUIET STUDY
MAIN COMMONS
AUDITORIUM
PRE-FUNCTION
LOBBY
STREAMLINING ACCESS WITH A METRO-FRIENDLY LOCATION
Amplifying our presence in the policy community
Increasing proximity to key institutions, organizations, and practitioners
Enabling growth, integration of research centers
Creating opportunities to engage visiting policymakers
Centralizing all McCourt programming
Attracting, convening mission-focused community partners
ENHANCING THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Bringing faculty and classes under one roof
Launching an undergraduate public policy program
Making room to double our faculty
Welcoming additional distinguished civil servants and visiting scholars
FACILITATING COLLABORATION ACROSS THE UNIVERSITY
Offering a global convening center to benefit all of Georgetown
Inspiring collaboration among resources from the Hill to the Hilltop
Increasing proximity to Georgetown Law’s centers and institutes
Breaking down institutional silos to more effectively address complex challenges
We are facing extraordinary challenges that require coordinated, collective action.
The McCourt School is not only called to help—it’s uniquely positioned to do so.
The generosity of the Georgetown community has been essential to the success of the McCourt School’s foundational years. Now we must meet the enormous opportunity ahead with the energy and resources needed to truly make a difference.
Thank you for your support as we work to deepen our capacity for transformational impact.
To learn more about these priorities and the difference your gift could make, please contact us at mccourtgiving@georgetown.edu.
